Examining revoicing practices of two Johannesburg teachers.

Abstract:

This study aims to address the need to support the improvement of teaching practices of South African mathematics teachers. Both international and South African literature suggest that orchestrating whole class discussion by using the practice of revoicing, can support learner appropriation of mathematical discourse, and that it is particularly suited to multilingual environments. Given the staying power of traditional style teaching, this study explores revoicing as a feedback practice within this style of Initiate, Respond, Evaluate/ Feedback (IRE/F) format. Two grade 6 mathematics teachers in Johannesburg were interviewed and their lessons were observed, filmed and analysed using a detailed coding instrument. The teachers were found to be giving as much revoicing as non-revoicing feedback to their learners and that revoicing was used in limited ways, mostly different to those suggested in the literature and not always productively. Key categories of revoicing seen in this study were repeating to affirm learners as well as rephrasing into mathematical language and funnelling learners towards correct answers. The contribution of this research to the field has been to expose the different ways in which two South African teachers are already using the practice of revoicing, in order to see the potential for further research and improved practice.